Life and death in south africa

The cemeteries are full. The only prospering businesses in the poor shantytowns are the funeral parlours. Coffins are dug up to be sold yet again. But in the middle of this catastrophe we know as AIDS there are people like Peggy whose strength, courage and benevolence bring hope for the future.

My feet sink in the soft sand surrounding a grave just opened. A dented sign of metal is nailed to the simple wooden cross. I read: Born December 2008…Deceased January 2009. The signs on the crosses close to this one look the same.

Reverend Peggy Chuke puts a tender arm around my shoulders and says. “Cry! You should only know how many nights I have cried myself to sleep”.

South Africa, with its 5.7 million infected, is the number one country in the world when it comes to HIV/AIDS infected. On Saturdays there are long winding queues to the newly opened cemeteries, several kilometres outside of town. The ones in town have been full for a long time.

-    Death is a norm, states Peggy. To attend a funeral has become a way of getting food.

But it is also big business. Shrewd funeral directors wear t-shirts with the print “Buy a funeral today – pay later”. Others are involved in more fishy schemes. Almost every morning graves have been dug up and coffins stolen – only to be sold again. The bodies of the dead are left behind, just barely covered.

Here in Alexandra, a shantytown outside Johannesburg, there are no limits to the desperation created by poverty. The area is notorious for its high level of criminality.

“Are you going there?” people ask us the day before we are to meet Peggy. “Then make sure that you keep your things in a tight grip.”

-    Sure, I hear guns going off every day and every night, says Peggy when we have lunch at Joe’s Butchery on 7th Street. The most popular meeting point in the area.

Joe’s wife brings us plates with barbecued pieces of meat, served with pap, a kind of rice porridge, and chakalaka, a sweet and sour vegetable dish. Joe himself died from AIDS last year.

-    I want to show you my neighbourhood so that you understand, Peggy continues when she shows us around the area where she lives.

She points out the illegal additions to the small houses of concrete that already from the beginning are standing very close. She makes us aware of all the sheds with roofs made of corrugated iron.

-    This area is so over-populated.

Alexandra was from the beginning built to house 150.000 people. Today there are 760.000 living here. And most of them have nothing to do. 75 % are unemployed.

-    When Nelson Mandela was elected President in 1994 and apartheid was ended, people expected things to change the day after the election: free schools, free health care but most of all better houses, work and medication… but the change never came.

-    Many are disappointed and disillusioned. They haven’t gained anything from democracy.

Peggy claims that this explains the high criminal rate.

-    Young people feel as if they have nothing to lose.

This also explains why so many young people are infected with HIV.

-    When you have nothing to do sex is a good way of passing time and there is an arrogance, a kind of “I don’t care”-attitude. And this is in spite of all the campaigns, all the distribution of free condoms in shops and phone booths.

-    They punish themselves without being aware of it.

Approximately 40 – 45 % of the population in Alexandra are infected. A lot of them children and young people. Peggy has chosen to dedicate her life to them. Besides working as a reverend in the local church, she organises conversation groups for the teenagers in the area. She also runs a nursing home for 10 children who have lost their parents because of AIDS.

-    There was no need for nursing homes before, explains Peggy. In our culture family and neighbours have always taken care of children who have lost their parents. But now, because of poverty, unemployment and the number of dead it is no longer possible. Also, due to stigmatization, many are reluctant of taking in a child positive with HIV.

Peggy also runs a day care center for the poorest children in the area. Outside there is a sign with the text “Leratong nursery” written on it.

-  Leratong means place for love, Peggy explains. The children we take care of have been deprived of happiness and joy. When they are born they are filled with rage. The people we employ have to be very patient.

Inside the day care centre, 160 children around six years old meet us. Some are playing; some are taking a nap on the floor made of stone in one of the two rooms.  Sunlight comes through the windows and the colourful paintings covering the panes.

One of those helping out at the nursery is Velami. He is 19 years old and tells us that his parnets have died in AIDS. He has come to Johannesburg to make money to provide for his four younger siblings. That is what his mother wanted.

-    You can’t allow yourself to think too much, he explains when I ask him how he was affected by losing his parents.

-    I was very stressed the two years after my mother died. Then you start to accept it and realise that you have to take care of yourself.

He continues.

-    I would like to study to become an engineer. Peggy has promised me that she will find the money. I don’t know if it is possible.

When he starts to doubt he usually takes comfort in reading.

-    It gives me hope for the future, that there are other possibilities.

Socializing with the other employees also helps him to stay positive. And he likes the job since he enjoys working with children very much. While we talk Velami carries a one-year old boy whose forehead has been damaged.

-    His parents hit him with a brick, Peggy explains when she notices how I look at the boy.

-    They are HIV-positive and they drink, she adds.

Addiction is also part of the poverty that surrounds the children growing up in Alexandra.

-    It is like a vicious circle: poverty, addiction, abuse and HIV.

More than half of the children at the nursing home are HIV-positive. Peggy and the others working there make sure that the children take their mediation according to a predetermined schedule. But also that they take their medicine together with proper food. Malnutrition is a very common problem when it comes to treatment since the children do not have enough to eat.

At the nursing home the children also get clean clothes thanks to donations from different organisations and companies.

In spite of everything Leratong Nursery is a place vibrating with joy and life thanks to people like Velami and Peggy.

-    I feel very hopeful about the future, Peggy states. We must commit ourselves, we must contribute. We must not look away from the fact that the world is divided between the rich and the poor.

-    The wise must take the ignorant by the hand and lead them. Then we will succeed.

Sophie Arnö

To learn more about Save the Children visit their website: www.savethechildren.org

"Many are disappointed and disillusioned. They haven’t gained anything from democracy. This explains the high criminal rate. Young people feel as if they have nothing to lose."